To be blunt, how dare you? You want a law that forces teenagers to give away their children as punishment? You said "no teenager" could take care of a baby.

I was 16 years old when I got pregnant with my oldest daughter. Today, she is a 16-year-old girl herself with excellent grades, a job and she volunteers for charities such as Relay for Life and the Alzheimer's Association.

She has been called one of the most respectful and well-behaved teenagers by practically every adult who has met her. Did her grandparents raise her?

No, ma'am. Her teenage mother did. I now have two other daughters who are both as well adjusted and well-behaved as the first. I will admit being a single teenage mom was a struggle.

Sometimes I worked as many as three jobs to pay the bills and provide a good life for my daughters.

But now, three months away from earning my bachelor's degree in nursing, I would say there was at least one teenager in America that could, in fact, take care of a baby.

And I thank my lucky stars every day that narrow minded fanatics that would require teenagers to give away their babies do not make the laws.Deanna C. ParrettHuntsville, 35803

Stem cell researchRecently, a federal judge cited the still-in-force 1996 Dickey-Wicker Amendment, saying that Congress had prohibited funding any research in which a human embryo was destroyed.

This ruling has given us a second chance to prevent our tax money from being used to take innocent human lives.

We were all once embryos and created equal. So, every human being should be respected, no matter what race, gender, or stage of life.

Part of the rationale used to justify the killing of human embryos is that they're going to be destroyed anyway. Actually, these embryos need not be destroyed. Adoption is a humane alternative.

Another guiding principle is that the patient, who is the source of the embryos, can provide permission to use the embryos.

We're talking about human beings here, not possessions. No one should be allowed to sign away innocent human lives, not even the parent.

Also, recent progress has made it possible to return adult cells to the embryonic-like pluripotent state. These cells can be taken from, and used by, the very one who needs them, so the rejection problem caused by using a different human's stem cells is avoided. Hence, we need not kill one human to save another.

Human embryonic stem cell research is unnecessary, and, hopefully, the second chance, provided by this judge, will get our country back on the side of protecting defenseless human lives. Michael V. Lupo Huntsville, 35802